


Two Little Lines

by Acalculia



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Santos Administration, post season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27817774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acalculia/pseuds/Acalculia
Summary: She knows that he loves her and supports her but still fear whispers in her ear that this will simply be too much for him
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 7
Kudos: 87





	1. 6:30am, Saturday

**Author's Note:**

> I have no consistent grasp of tense and am scared of ending sentences without giving them the opportunity to ramble. enjoy.

She had always hoped that if she ever found herself looking down at a positive pregnancy test the first thing through her head would be joy not an indecipherable string of curse words. Yet here she was, sitting on the cold tile floor, test in hand, and the first thing her brain could conjure up was ‘shit’. 

She takes 3 deep breaths, counts to 5 and opens her eyes. The second test is as unmistakably positive as the first. Resting her head back against the lip of the bathtub, Donna closes her eyes tightly again, two little bright pink lines burned on the inside of her eyelids. _She’s pregnant._

For the first time ever, she’s relieved that Josh is away- 5 days into a 6 day global security summit trip to Copenhagen. Sure, she hasn’t slept properly without him in the bed next to her but right now, all she has to do, all she can do, is focus on digesting this for herself.

Her phone alarm beeps cheerily from the floor beside her, 7:00am on a Saturday. It’s almost mocking as Donna’s already been up for half an hour and had her life immeasurably changed in the quiet, still morning before most of the street was even awake. She curses quietly again, of course this is the first Saturday she’s had to work in months. She doubts that her brain has much room to be as attentive as she should be for this morning’s library opening and story-time with the First Lady as part of her campaign on children’s literacy. 

Donna stands and places both tests on a square of paper towel next to the sink as she starts getting ready. By the time she’s out of the shower, she’s moments away from a full panic spiral. She forces herself to be slow and deliberate, focusing on one step at a time and ignoring how shaky her hands are as she twists her hair up and applies mascara.

Her phone is unlocked and her finger is hovering over CJ’s contact in her recent call list before she stops herself and sits on the edge of the bathtub. For one thing, it’s 4am on the West Coast, although based on their conversation earlier there’s a good chance CJ is already up with the baby, who at 15 months old is going through a major sleep regression and keeping her and Danny up at all hours. For another, no matter how calming she knows talking to CJ would be, Donna can’t possible tell anyone before she tells Josh.

While most of her panic is for herself, she’d be lying if she said it wasn’t partly for him. Donna wants Josh to be incandescently happy, dimples out in full force and eyes shining. She also knows it’s not exactly fair to expect that when her own first reaction involved the kind of language she would never use in front of her mother. Josh Lyman had made significant emotional progress over the more than a decade she had known him but with unexpected news like this, she knew him well enough to guess that his default setting would be clammy and inarticulate to the point of near complete shutdown.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t talked about kids, they were grown-ups, financially secure, and, for God’s sakes, some of the most powerful people in the country. But they had only been engaged for 3 months and had nothing but abstract plans, in a year or two, after the wedding, with Santos securely in his second term, moving out of the apartment into a house in the suburbs near the good schools. She’d always imagined at some point a future involving the PTA and the idea of Josh with a baby in his arms made her heart damn near explode but shit, she hadn’t expected this and it was terrifying.

Their years in the Santos White House hadn’t been like their days under Bartlet. Sure, Josh still worked the odd 18 hour day and was always going to be on call in the case of catastrophe, but Matt was determined to still be a father himself. Weekends were, for the most part, actually weekends- today being about the 3rd Saturday Donna had worked in the last year. But it’s the start of May, 6 months until Election Day. She doesn’t want to tempt the wrath of the thing from high atop whatever, but there’s no Arnie Vinick in this year’s Republican candidate field, Heaven forbid some interruption, they’ll be in the White House for another 4 years. While incumbent President has a lot more running power than dark horse congressman, a campaign is still a campaign.

She doesn’t have time to dwell on the realities of mixing a campaign schedule with a pregnancy because her phone chimes again. 7:30am. Josh’s name lights up the screen, she knows it’s some time in the afternoon and he’s probably got about 10 minutes, likely in the car on the way to a farewell event or delegation meeting, her usual ability to flawlessly remember his schedule falling aside at the moment. Her bottom lip is in danger of splitting as she worries it between her teeth but she can’t help but smile as she looks at one of her favourite photos of the two of them, his message covering the top of her lock screen. She’s looking into the camera with her head on his shoulder, he’s looking slightly out of the frame, both of them grinning from ear to ear. 

_“Good morning! Only one more sleep til i’m back home to you. Got time for a quick call before FLOTUS library?”_

She briefly considers picking up the phone and telling him, right there and then. But this isn’t exactly an over-the-phone, stuck-on-the-other-side-of-the-world-entertaining-dignitaries conversation. Springing something like this on him when he’s an 8 hour flight away would likely lead to an international incident. She knows the panic that would build up inside him, it’s threatening to overwhelm her. Before she can respond, a second message pops up.

_“Feeling any better today? Have you eaten anything?”_

On Monday afternoon Miranda had been sent home from school with a stomach bug. By that evening, it had made its way to Peter and the next morning, after Donna had sprinted from a meeting with her hand clamped over her mouth, Mrs Santos had promptly sent her home. Before she was even through the door, she had a call waiting from Air-Force 1. Apparently Helen had mentioned it to Matt, who told Josh, who had never dealt well when the words ‘Donna’ and ‘sick’ were in the same sentence. 

_“It’s a stomach flu Joshua, you can’t turn around the President and a summit delegation a year in the making just because your fiancé and Miranda’s entire 4th grade class can’t keep down their breakfast”_

_“We’ve only been in the air about an hour, I could probably parachute out and be holding your hair back by lunchtime”_

_“Of course, because parachuting is a skill that you have secretly mastered and you’re not the most squeamish man on the planet. It’s probably some 24 hour thing, I’ll be fine by the time you land”._

She’d been back at work by the end of the week, although slightly queasy and exhausted, but he’d still called twice a day and Donna suspected he’d had a chat with Annabeth, who wouldn’t leave her alone. Helen had started giving her an odd look on day 3 of her 24 hour bug but she’d reassured the First Lady that she was up for a quick Saturday morning literacy event and a weekend of doing nothing until Josh was home on Sunday to take care of her. By the fourth morning she found herself hunched over on the bathroom floor she’d started doubting this was a regular stomach flu. It wasn’t until that afternoon that this potential had even occur to her.

She managed to keep her cool through dinner and campaign media coverage planning with Annabeth and Mrs Santos. She’d scrubbed just about every surface in their kitchen to keep her hands busy before finally deciding that she could not possibly wait the 30 something hours until Josh was home. Donna knew exactly what she looked like- approaching midnight, wearing pyjama pants that she hoped looked enough like sweat pants if no-one looked too closely and Josh’s ratty old Harvard sweater. The teenager behind the counter hadn’t been able to wipe the smirk off her face as Donna bought 2 tests, different brands, and sent up a silent prayer of thanks that she was no longer the highly recognisable face of a national Presidential campaign. She was honestly pretty impressed with her own willpower. Seeing Josh’s “ _Happy last morning waking up in Denmark without you next to me_ ” text as she came back through the door to the brownstone convinced her to put the tests in the bathroom cabinet, waiting for a moment Josh should probably be here for. But finding herself on the bathroom floor again on Saturday morning, after a sleepless night fretting over both what a positive result would mean and the little voice that actually really wanted to see two lines, had lead her back into the cabinet to rip open both packages.

She had, thankfully, only ever had reason to take a test twice before. Once when she was 19, freshly dropped out of college and already feeling like a failure in every sense of the word. The second time was just before she had packed up her entire life and driven from Wisconsin to New Hampshire entirely on her own. The sheer amount of relief that that single line had brought her and the realisation that it wasn’t just the thought of having a baby but the fear of having _Dr Freeride’s_ baby had given her the good sense to finally leave him. Neither were particularly stellar memories.

But now she has Josh, the best man she knows, who loves her so deeply. This baby is _Josh’s_.The deep breaths are working and her initial shock is starting to give way to a slightly giddy feeling. Quick maths tells her it’s a January baby, she doubts that there is a large range of choices when it comes to Inauguration ballgowns for the hugely pregnant then quickly checks herself. The campaign comes first, long nights, hundreds of events, traveling all over the country and an extremely stressed out Josh. This may be the _worst_ possible timing. But what does her mother always say when she’s strongly hinting that Josh and Donna need to move up their timeline? It’s never going to be the perfect time to have a baby. She loves working with Helen, but she’s busy too, today being basically a kick-off event in Helen’s own Campaign calendar. This time they’re using Helen more, she’s done good work on her own initiatives, the kids are older and the Santos family dynamic plays well. Donna doesn’t know the schedule much further out than a month, but she can only imagine how it will plan to send Matt and Helen criss-crossing around the country, taking her and Josh with them on separate, packed, itineraries.

Josh’s reaction pricks at her again. She knows him so well that she can’t imagine, not really, that he would not want this child. She _knows_ that he loves her and supports her but still fear whispers in her ear that this will simply be too much for him. A decision like this, to have a child, should be planned and thought out. He’s only really just started understanding the concept of having a personal life, not to mention evolving past barely having the emotional maturity to knock sideways into someone and never talk about anything below the surface, how would a baby fit into that? 

He will always work too hard and give in to his monomaniacal tendencies too regularly for her liking and worry about her way too much but she also knows he would be good at this. She sees him with her nieces and nephews, with Miranda and Peter, when they went to visit CJ and Danny in Santa Monica. She can already see him sweetly cradling a baby with his dimples and curls, maybe her fair blonde coloring. She’s pretty sure they will mess up a kid in all the usual ways parents mess up their kids but, as she slowly inhales and exhales to ward off the panic, she’s also pretty sure it could be wonderful. 

She decides that if she hears his voice right now, she’ll be unable to keep it to herself so shoots back a quick message as she walks through the kitchen.

“ _You worry too much._ _I’m fine but running out the door, can’t wait to see you soon!”_

“ _I worry the appropriate amount. We’ve had a slight schedule change, ETA tomorrow morning 10am instead of afternoon. Managed to convince POTUS my fiancé is more important than NATO ;), be home before you know it”_

She lets out a laugh, remembering the opportunistic trade meeting that he had been hoping to tack on at the last minute pushing back their original flight time. She adds a photo of herself holding a banana up as a smile, she knows he’s been beside himself with worry and hopes it will reassure him. She still feels terrible but knowing the reason for her persistent nausea has her feeling better about it.

She runs back into the bathroom after a single bite of the banana. After brushing her teeth again and fixing her mascara, hand steady this time, she heads out the door. She pauses for a second and looks back at the clear bright pink lines of the tests sitting neatly beside the sink. A slight smile plays at the corner of her mouth. Why should she be scared of two little lines?


	2. 6:30am Sunday

Josh Lyman is exhausted. Air-Force 1 might be exceptionally well fitted out but it’s still a plane and flying for over 8 hours will never agree with him. They left Copenhagen before sunrise, even further ahead of the revised schedule to try and beat an expected electrical storm, flew through the Scandinavian day but American night to land in DC just before 6am. He was a smart man but timezones still boggled him slightly.

When he was younger, jet lag barely bothered him. He never slept long enough or regularly enough to be thrown off by a change in timezone. With a sleep schedule as erratic as his, what did it matter if he got his usual 4 hours of sleep in the middle of the day or middle of the night. His life has become so much more domestic since he and Donna got together. He knows she was looking out for him long before that, trying to sneak him regular meals and encourage some semblance of a healthy rest schedule. She really doubled down over the last 3 years however, he was home before 8pm unless there was a crisis and averaged 6 hours a night, sleeping better than he ever had with her in his arms. Not having her right outside his office forced him to actually break for lunch when he could and, now that he could see her without dragging her in to work and had a home life he enjoyed, he understood what weekends were for. He was, for all intents and purposes, a regular functioning human who sleeps through the night, sometimes eats salads and has what many, including his younger self, would consider a work-life balance.

He watches the sky change with the sunrise out the window of the car on the way from Andrews to their Georgetown brownstone. He yawns and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, he knows he should try and stay up all day to beat the jet lag, but it’s not yet 7am and Sundays are for sleep ins. All he wants to do is crawl in bed next to Donna. He tried to sleep on the plane, keeping in mind that they took off in the middle of the night in DC, but as luck would have it, he finally settled into Danish time as they left Denmark behind. Besides, he hasn’t slept properly since he left, feeling a little lost without her in the bed next to him. Previously, he would have found this codependence a little pathetic but he knows he’s powerless when it comes to her and besides, she doesn’t sleep well without him either.

The reality of campaign travel is already looming over him. Josh loves the fight, the excitement of campaigning and electoral college math but he’s trying to be less singularly focused and driven only by his work, although he knows that this one shouldn’t be as hard as last time.Last time nearly killed him, he has Donna, and Sam he supposes, to thank for the fact that he’s even here now. He’s never thanked Sam properly for knocking him down a few pegs and giving him the kick he needed to see the importance of other things around him, he thinks idly, running his hands through his hair until it’s standing straight up. Resting his head against the window, he know that the President’s approval ratings, and Josh’s attempt at a hands-off separate campaign and governing approach, mean that the schedule won’t be quite as hectic, but campaigning is still campaigning and he certainly has his eye on some districts and states he reckons can flip. That means travel, more nights away from his own bed and Donna than he would like, especially as Helen, and Donna with her, will have their own slate of events to capitalise on the First Lady’s popularity. 

They’re pulling into his block now and he can feel himself start to relax at how close he is to Donna again. It’s dark in the houses that they pass, he really hopes that she is still asleep, as she’s the driving force behind his own new belief in sleep-ins whenever possible. He hopes he can sneak in unnoticed, she isn’t expecting him for a couple of hours yet, his message about an early take-off going unread last night as, he hoped, she was already in bed. She’s always been stoic and has done her best to try and convince him that she’s feeling better but he’s spent the last 5 days more distracted than he has let on to her. Josh had tried, and failed, to subtlety ask after the Santos kids to work out how long this thing was hanging around for. Miranda had taken 2 days off of school and even Peter had felt so rotten he’d been convinced to spend a day on the couch but 5 days later, Donna was still sick. Even Matt was starting to get slightly exasperated by his COS, finding his concern sweet at the start of the week and his pining downright frustrating by the end. Josh couldn’t help but roll his eyes when the jokes and not-so-gentle ribbing started about how anyone could have possibly stood to be around him in the days before he was allowed to actually show his affection towards Donna. Sam assured President Santos that it really wasn’t that much different, Josh himself doesn’t understand how he spent so many years so close to her but so painfully separate. 

Josh can’t help his concern, she works hard and is only going to be working harder in the coming campaign months. Despite her attempts to reassure him that it’s probably just stress and being a little rundown that is prolonging her recovery from a totally normal bout of stomach flu, he knows she’s still feeling unwell and should be feeling better by now. It is really starting to worry him, plus, he left her home alone, guilt creeping in as he imagines her, sick and feeling awful without him there to help her. Her positive updates got more insistent as the week progressed but he’d had a quick chat with a very amused Annabeth who left him with the impression that Donna was at work when she really should have been tucked up in bed with someone, him, waiting on her hand and foot. He should have been there this whole time, tucking her in to bed and bringing her ginger tea and plain toast. He’s convinced himself that unless he sees real improvement, there’s nothing that can stop him from forcing her to go to the doctor instead of work on Monday. 

The car stops at the kerb in front of the stoop to their apartment. He thanks the driver and exchanges a few hushed tones with his detail before entering the house as quietly as possible. Toeing off his shoes by the front door, he drops his garment bag over the arm of the sofa and places his suitcase quietly on the floor. Stretching his arms above his head and walking slowly towards their bedroom, he stops for a second when he sees the faint glow from the bathroom door left ajar, light on inside. He swivels around quickly, relieved as he looks down to see her still asleep in their bed, although from the slightly scrunched looked on her face and the comforter haphazardly thrown over to one side, it looks as if it’s not a particularly restful sleep.

He bends down to plant a gentle kiss on her forehead, trying his best not to wake her, before slipping into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He’s changed into an old t-shirt and sweats, brushed his teeth and is halfway through washing his face before he looks down at the counter. It takes another few seconds for his sleep-addled brain to register what the two little strips of plastic sitting neatly on a piece of paper towel are.

He blinks twice, looks towards the closed door to their bedroom then back down at the counter. He’s pretty sure that if he were to dig through the bathroom trash to find the instructions he would find that they would tell him the two lines displayed in the little window of each of the tests means positive. _Donna’s pregnant._

Well, that would certainly explain how sick she had been. He hadn’t even considered that. It’s like the wind has been completely knocked out of his lungs and he feels almost giddy. He feels his way to sit on the edge of the tub, vision starting to blur around the edges as a rushing starts in his ears. Suddenly, he’s completely awake, his brain working so fast he can practically feel smoke coming out of his ears as it starts to malfunction. He’s still staring at the test on the counter so squeezes his eyes shut and takes deep breaths, focusing on nothing but _inhale, hold, exhale_ until he is capable of comprehensive thought again.

She’s going to have a baby. _They’re_ going to have a baby. His mom is going to be so happy. He thinks he is too. He can’t help his smile as he thinks of Donna with a tiny version of herself. That was, eventually he figured, the plan but right now? He’s got to get Matt Santos reelected and election day is less than 6 months away. In the next month alone, she is supposed to be in at least 5 different states and his next trip is within a week. But now, he needs to be here, to take her to appointments, check that she’s eating right and make the spare room into a nursery. He can’t imaging that flying and driving and long, stressful days are what she needs right now. He can’t let her traipse around in unfamiliar towns with unfamiliar hospitals or, God forbid, no hospital at all. He can’t leave her here without him, dealing with sickness and cravings and the many many catastrophic possibilities that he doesn’t know the statistics of but are already lurking in the fuzzy spots on the edge of his vision.

He’s already left her alone for this, she had to find out on her own and that weighs so heavy it’s almost suffocating. He had no idea how long she’s know or why she hadn’t told him. In flashes in his mind that maybe she hasn’t told him because she isn’t sure that she wasn’t to have his baby. He _knows_ that she loves him and can’t imagine, not if he stops to breathe and think, that she would not want this child. But the thought comes to him unbidden, red and angry and grating against that part of his brain that has always raised its hackles and growled ‘ _mine’_ when any part of Donna was threatened or questioned or taken on a date by a Republican. He’s feeling incredibly unsteady. How can he do this? How can he be the father that Donna and _their baby_ deserve?

He thinks his head might explode and needs to stop the panic spiral threatening to overwhelm him. A minute ago, he was trying his hardest not to wake her but now, he desperately needs to speak to her. While he’s fairly certain he understands what is going on, he needs to hear her say it. Without conscious thought, he’s sitting beside her on his side of the bed. Laying one hand on her arm, Josh reaches out to sweep her hair off of her face and softly calls her name.

She stirs and brings a hand up to rub her eye before looking up at him, blearily, “Josh, what time is it? You aren’t supposed to be here yet”.

“There was a storm warning, we flew in early,” he says, aware that his voice is slightly too loud to be the calm, reassuring whisper he is going for. “Donna, I wasn’t going to wake you but,” he pauses, “are you pregnant?”

He watches as she’s suddenly completely awake too, swallowing hard and sitting herself up next to him. “I think so.” She matches his tone, slightly too loud and frantic in the still morning. “I took the tests yesterday, I meant to put them away but didn’t think you’d be home until later”.

“So it’s not the stomach flu?”

Despite herself, she chuckles a little, “no, I don’t think so”.

“Wow” is all he can muster as he looks down at his hands, he has too many thoughts and not enough words.

“Yeah”, she exhales, trying to catch his eye. He realises she’s nervous. There are tears pooling at the corner of her eyes. _Shit_ , he thinks, she’s scared of his reaction, worried that he’s going to freak out on her. 

“Wow,” he says again, this time looking right into her eyes, and smiling a little. He’s aware that he should probably aim for more than a single syllable but she seems to understand, it’s delivered with awe.

“Yeah?” she questions as he reaches out to her again, entwining his fingers with hers. His grin is practically splitting now.

He pulls her close to his chest, all traces of exhaustion forgotten as he quizzes her on how she’s feeling and she tells him her suspicions on failing birth control, still slightly trepidatiously. He leans back to look her square in the face, reassuring her that he’s not disappointed or upset or anything like that, he's excited, he thinks, just also very surprised and overwhelmed.

They lie there for a while, discussing plans and appointments and occasionally talking each other off a ledge. Despite the early hour, they don’t go back to sleep.


End file.
